They are all students attending university in the most powerful and prosperous country on the face of the Earth.
An ocean of possibility stands before each and every single one of these young students, the likes of which can only be dreamed of by millions of children in war torn, impoverished or otherwise benighted parts of the world.
This is a cult.
These people are cultists.
This is what the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics hath wrought.
Postscript: To be fair, from the smirks of some of the students in the last video it does appear that they realise deep down that this is all a fraud, that none of them are “chained”, and that this huge collective tantrum from the most privileged generation in history is nothing but a massive insult toward previous generations who really did have to fight, win, and yes, even cast off their chains.
Two journalists were sentenced to two years in prison on April 28 for republishing in their columns a cover of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo featuring an image of the Prophet Muhammad.
Istanbul’s Second Criminal Court of First Instance sentenced daily Cumhuriyet journalists Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Çetinkaya to two years on charges of “openly encouraging hate and enmity among people via the press” for reprinting the caricature of the Islamic prophet after the Jan. 7, 2015, attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris that killed 12 people.
However, the court ruled for the acquittal of the journalists on charges of “insulting people’s religious values” on the grounds that the criminal factors had not been constituted.
Some 1,280 people had filed a criminal complaint against Karan and Çetinkaya for republishing in their columns the cover of Charlie Hebdo, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his daughters Esra Albayrak and Sümeyye Erdoğan, his son Bilal Erdoğan, his son-in-law Energy Minister Berat Albayrak and his adviser Mustafa Varank.
So the climate for journalism in Turkey is now such that a despotic thin-skinned president and members of his parasitic family feel that it is appropriate to drag journalists before the court and have them convicted simply for carrying out objective reporting.
Closing down independent newspapers and converting them into pro-government propaganda outlets is apparently no longer enough. Individual journalists must also be persecuted and jailed for offending the sensibilities of the Turkish president, his close family members and a thousand or so other assorted religious fundamentalists who believe that their right to sail through life unoffended trumps the right of journalists to report the news.
But the sentencing comes amid a mushrooming crackdown on Turkish and international news media within the country. According to PEN International, some 28 writers and journalists were either detained or imprisoned in Turkey at the end of 2015 while more than 100 remained on trial, most for national security offenses.
Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief, Can Dündar, and the paper’s Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gül, are currently on trial on trial behind closed doors on charges of revealing state secrets and could face multiple life sentences if found guilty.
International trial monitors and press freedom groups have condemned those proceedings, describing the case as an instance in which “journalism is on trial”.
And this is a country which entertains hopes of joining the European Union.
This is the regime which Europe Germany is scrambling to appease.
The sentencing of these journalists is unacceptable. But it is also exactly what many in Britain and the West tacitly condone when they leap to their feet in defence of the right of “marginalised” people to avoid having their religious faith and political opinions subjected to the same scrutiny, discussion and criticism as those from the “privileged” majority.
This is the legacy of every single person who supports the concept of “hate speech”, or whose condescending, neo-colonialist views of Muslims and other minorities hold that they are inherently less intelligent, less capable of engaging in debate and more prone to violence than the white majority, who should indulge them in their fragility or violent excesses like understanding parent figures.
As soon as one accepts the racist notion that some people are inherently less capable than others of having their beliefs and opinions challenged or even mocked, one opens the door to civil or criminal penalties for doing so.
It is time for Britain and the West to reoccupy the depressingly deserted moral high ground. Yes, criticise Turkey for their government’s chilling suppression of free speech and a free press, and yes, proclaim that you are still Charlie (but only if you really are).
But as we do so, we should not allow the beam in beleaguered Turkey’s eye to distract us from the steadily-growing speck in our own.
I don’t do this often – maybe twice a year – but this is one of those times when I walk up and down the virtual tube carriage shaking my tin and requesting any spare change from readers who find some real value in this site, and have the means to help support it through a monetary donation or subscription, however small.
(Those who have already kindly donated this year are specifically requested NOT to do so again, and to instead consider supporting The Leave Alliance here if they feel so inclined – your generosity towards me is already very much appreciated. You know who you are.)
I am pleased to report that this blog is going from strength to strength (as hopefully you will have observed). New features have been trialled, some have inevitably fallen by the wayside and others have really taken off. Most notably, yours truly was invited to debate the infantilisation of today’s students on the BBC’s Daily Politics show earlier this year – not necessarily the topic or angle I most wanted for my debut, but a good opportunity nonetheless, and one which led to this brilliant caricature drawn by a viewer:
The upshot is that with two back-to-back record-breaking months in March and April, pageviews and unique visitors for 2016 to date have already surpassed the totals for 2015. In other words, in the first third of this year more people have visited and read Semi-Partisan Politics than did so in the whole of 2015.
This has been achieved partly by a significant increase in blogging frequency – from several posts per week to several posts per day, on average. In many ways this is bowing to the inevitable. A political blog is in some ways like a television channel, and going quiet even for a day is the equivalent of dead air during prime time – if you stop, people will simply change the channel.
But this growth is also due to the loyalty and help of you, the readers. Increasingly I find that Semi-Partisan Politics is getting significant referrals through Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and various online bulletin boards – not to mention from the sidebar links of my blogging comrades of The Leave Alliance. Now that this site has a small but real readership, I am able to spend more time writing and less time trying to drum up an audience. A sincere thank you to all those who have shared links to this site, or taken the time to comment and enrich the debate here.
The other fairly significant change is an increase in shorter response-based pieces, particularly with the “Tales From The Safe Space” series. Here, the broader argument (in defence of free speech and academic freedom) is advanced in multiple posts, without the need to restate the case in full each time, and I have shared numerous examples of bad (and occasionally encouraging) things taking place on British and American university campuses with some pointed commentary, but without the full context you would get in a complete essay.
While I continue to play around with the format and focus of individual posts and series, this blog retains its commitment to the following ideals:
Brexit: freedom from the European Union
Democracy and national sovereignty
Constitutional reform and a federal UK
Separation of church and state
Healthcare reform, not NHS worship
Smaller, smarter government
Free speech, without restriction
Fighting the Cult of Identity Politics
Fighting timid centrism on the Right
Fighting empty virtue-signalling on the Left
Maintaining the high tempo of blogging required to grow this site means that besides the day job and family time, this blog is my life. Other interests are largely on hold in order to commit to writing as much as possible, a sacrifice I am happy to make because I believe the issues which I write about are important. The few occasions on which this blog has been picked up in the national media validate this assessment, I believe.
I would like to do more. My future reading list now spills onto two book shelves as I try to stay up to date with the most important issues I cover while also trying to remediate a desperately poor grounding in history and philosophy (thanks, state education).
Obviously the EU referendum is a priority at the moment – I am proud of my association with The Leave Alliance, the only group with not only a plan for achieving Brexit in a safe and non-disruptive way, but more importantly a genuinely positive vision for what a globally engaged and democratically renewed Britain should look like.
If you agree with these objectives and enjoy this blog’s coverage and commentary, please do consider using the PayPal tip jar to make a small contribution to my work:
Michael Bloomberg delivers a college commencement speech worth hearing
While it is true that a generation of university students – the product of our therapeutic culture and “you can’t say that” attitude to political debate – is now being indoctrinated into the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics with alarmingly little resistance from the educational establishment, there is at least one graduating class which has been sent out into the world with a rather more inspiring (and small-L liberal) message ringing in their ears.
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was invited to address the University of Michigan’s graduating class of 2016, and from the first word of his speech he tore into the culture of safe spaces, trigger warnings and all of the other illiberal symptoms of this new orthodoxy.
The most useful knowledge that you leave here with today has nothing to do with your major. It’s about how to study, cooperate, listen carefully, think critically and resolve conflicts through reason. Those are the most important skills in the working world, and it’s why colleges have always exposed students to challenging and uncomfortable ideas.
The fact that some university boards and administrations now bow to pressure and shield students from these ideas through “safe spaces,” “code words” and “trigger warnings” is, in my view, a terrible mistake.
The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations — not run away from them. A microaggression is exactly that: micro. And one of the most dangerous places on a college campus is a safe space, because it creates the false impression that we can insulate ourselves from those who hold different views.
We can’t do this, and we shouldn’t try — not in politics or in the workplace. In the global economy, and in a democratic society, an open mind is the most valuable asset you can possess.
Think about the global economy. For the first time in human history, the majority of people in the developed world are being asked to make a living with their minds, rather than their muscles. For 3,000 years, humankind had an economy based on farming: Till the soil, plant the seed, harvest the crop. It was hard to do, but fairly easy to learn. Then, for 300 years, we had an economy based on industry: Mold the parts, turn the crank, assemble the product. This was hard to do, but also fairly easy to learn.
Now, we have an economy based on information: Acquire the knowledge, apply the analytics and use your creativity. This is hard to do and hard to learn, and even once you’ve mastered it, you have to start learning all over again, pretty much every day.
Keeping an open mind to new ideas is essential to your professional success — just as it’s crucial to our collective future as a democratic society.
Note the loud booing quickly drowned out by cheering when Bloomberg talks about the inherent intellectual and academic danger of a “safe space” – while his remarks were warmly received, there is clearly a very vocal group of students who did not want to hear this message, and who will step forth from the University of Michigan with very warped views about how political debate (and even ordinary interpersonal relationships) should be conducted.
Bloomberg then turns his attention to the presidential race and the state of American democracy in general:
Democracy in action can actually produce a lot of inaction, which we see every day in Washington and other levels of government, too. When governments fail to address the needs of the people, voters in both parties get angry and some politicians exploit that anger by offering scapegoats instead of solutions.
If we want to stop demagogues, we have to start governing again, and that requires us to be more civil, to support politicians who have the courage to take risks, and to reward those who reach across the aisle in search of compromise.
Here, Bloomberg is almost channelling Andrew Sullivan, who makes his incredibly welcome and sorely needed return to political commentary in the New York magazine with these words:
An American elite that has presided over massive and increasing public debt, that failed to prevent 9/11, that chose a disastrous war in the Middle East, that allowed financial markets to nearly destroy the global economy, and that is now so bitterly divided the Congress is effectively moot in a constitutional democracy: “We Respectables” deserve a comeuppance. The vital and valid lesson of the Trump phenomenon is that if the elites cannot govern by compromise, someone outside will eventually try to govern by popular passion and brute force.
(I’ll be blogging a response to Andrew Sullivan’s piece separately in due course).
Bloomberg closes with this warning:
Think about this: In 1960, only 4 to 5 percent of Democrats and Republicans said they would be upset if a member of their family married someone from the opposing party. In 2010, one in three Democrats and one in two Republicans said they would disapprove of such a marriage. In 1960, most people would never have believed that interparty marriage would attract such resistance, while interracial and same-sex marriage would gain such acceptance.
For all the progress we have made on cultural tolerance, when it comes to political tolerance, we are moving in the wrong direction — at campaign rallies that turn violent, on social media threads that turn vitriolic, and on college campuses, where students and faculty have attempted to censor political opponents.
As durable as the American system of government has been, democracy is fragile — and demagogues are always lurking. Stopping them starts with placing a premium on open minds, voting, and demanding that politicians offer practical solutions, not scapegoats or pie-in-the-sky promises.
This is a message which many students will not want to hear, but which needs to be transmitted nonetheless – and not only by commencement speakers, refreshing though it is to hear the likes of Bloomberg take up the cause.
University administrators and professors must also absorb and embrace this message and change the way they approach issues of free speech and academic freedom, for while they are not entirely responsible for the censorious and emotionally fragile nature of new students entering their institutions, they do represent the last and best hope of turning those students into robust and resilient young citizens by the time they graduate.
Michael Bloomberg delivering a crowd-riling, viral-ready commencement speech just as students are about to graduate cannot be our only firewall against the onslaught of this new illiberal movement. We must erect meaningful defences and interventions much earlier in the learning process – rather than simply bowing to the excessive demands and exaggerated sensibilities of perpetually offended students – if we wish to prevent our workplaces and government from going the same way as our university campuses.
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Conservative students and professors have long felt the need to downplay, disguise or hide their true political leanings
We have long known that the university campus and large parts of the academy are a hostile environment – an unsafe space, if you will – for those of a conservative mindset, student and professor alike.
The assumption that most college campuses lean left is so widespread in American culture that it has almost become a caricature: intellectuals in thick-rimmed glasses preaching Marxism on idyllic grassy quads; students protesting minor infractions against political correctness; raging professors trying to prove that God is, in fact, dead. Studies about professors’ political beliefs and voting behavior suggest this assumption is at least somewhat correct. But Shields and Dunn set out to investigate a more nuanced question: For the minority of professors who are cultural and political conservatives, what’s life actually like?
Finding out wasn’t easy, in part because so many conservative professors are—as they put it—closeted. Some of the people they interviewed explicitly said they identify with the experience of gays and lesbians in having to hide who they are. One tenure-track sociology professor even asked to meet Shields and Dunn in a park a mile away from his university. “When the sound of footsteps intruded on our sanctuary, he stopped talking altogether, his eyes darting about,” they write. “Given the drama of this encounter, one might think that he is concealing something scandalous. In truth, this professor is hiding the fact that he is a Republican.”
These professors – the vanishingly small number of conservatives who even bother pursuing careers in the social sciences – are not only scared of their students. That much is a relatively new development. They are also scared of their peers in academia, and their bosses in university leadership roles.
A historian at an elite research university, for example, said he was initially denied tenure on account of his political views. He discovered that a colleague had in a letter referred to him as an “appalling Eurocentric conservative” for suggesting to students that North Korea should be blamed for the Korean War. Another extremely productive sociologist was voted down for tenure by his colleagues and dean, only to have the vote reversed by a provost — due in part to some liberal colleagues who cried foul at the process. One such colleague reportedly told the sociologist in question, “Your religion, your politics, entered into the discussion for tenure and basically a lot of extraneous things were not relevant to [your] performance were questioned.” That professor and others with similar experiences said they initially — and perhaps naïvely — thought that their research, teaching and service records would speak for themselves come tenure time, and that writing occasional essays for conservative publications or otherwise “showing” their views wouldn’t matter.
So this is the famous liberal tolerance. And now, compounding this hostile environment, we have the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics to contend with.
The Right cannot afford to continue surrendering the academy to their opponents. Neither it is in the interests of the Left to wield such dominance, for their ability to debate and innovate sensible new policy is already starting to atrophy through lack of a conservative counterpoint.
Semi-Partisan Politics 